Dr. Jianing Chen travelled to Xiamen over the weekend to engage in an in-depth exchange with Prof. Nathan Hill, an American linguist who is visiting China for academic exchange. Both scholars are affiliated with the Chinese-Foreign Academic Translation Project "Structural Study of Chinese Palaeography", chaired by Dr. Xiaoling Deng of the College of Foreign Languages and Cultures at Xiamen University.

Professor Hill was invited by Professor Yuying Ye of the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Xiamen University to deliver two lectures on 23rd and 24th November. On the morning of 25th November, Dr. Deng, Dr. Chen, and Professor Hill held a profound discussion regarding the issues arising from their translation project. In the afternoon, Dr. Chen and Professor Hill discussed academic research, translation and their plans for cooperation. They also made preliminary plans for cooperation in the development of their students and other areas, accompanied by Professor Ye.

Professor Hill is currently the Sam Lam Professor in Chinese Studies and the Director of the Trinity Centre for Asian Studies, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. He earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2009 and previously taught Tibetan and historical linguistics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He researches Tibeto-Burman/Sino-Tibetan historical linguistics. He has published in the areas of Old Tibetan descriptive linguistics, Tibetan corpus linguistics, Tibeto-Burman reconstruction and comparative linguistics, the history of Chinese, etc. His books include The Historical Phonology of Tibetan, Burmese, and Chinese (2019, Cambridge), A Lexicon of Tibetan Verb Stems as Reported by the Grammatical Tradition (2010, Bavarian Academy of Sciences), and Old Tibetan Inscriptions, co-authored with Kazushi Iwao (2009, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies).